UK already technically banned encryption, causing Apple to remove the encrypted cloud service for UK customers. Check UK's "Investigatory Powers Act (IPA)"
I think you misunderstood, the major issue is that companies are actually "renting", it's just at 100k words long terms of services where they redefine "purchase" as rental.
California has actually done something about this, you can longer claim that customers are "buying" when they're actually just renting.
If i claimed i sell a house for 500K but the in terms of sale redefine sale as rent the house for 500K and i can claim the property back anytime, that'd be crime yet it's somehow legal with digital goods.
While the majority of flats are leasehold, by far the vast majority of property in England is freehold. Only a fifth is leasehold.
While technically a leasehold has a fixed term and at the end of the lease (usually starts at 99 years) the land owner technically owns the property, in reality this scares most people so usually when someone sells the property (usually while there's still at least 80 years left on the lease) you try to extend the lease again back to 90 years. So while it is possible for the lease to run out and people lose their property, it's usually something you'd be expecting when you took over the lease (and so you'd pay a correspondingly lower price for the property). While the lease is active, there's usually an annual fee from between 100 and 10000 pounds. Obviously, the higher this is, the lower the sale price of the property is likely to be.
Personally, I wouldn't touch leasehold with a bargepole, and unless you want to live in the centre of a city there's usually plenty of freehold property available so you don't need to go down the leasehold route.
Interesting. Do the longer ones have some provision for increasing in line with inflation? AFAIK the 99 year leases are usually for a fixed amount every year, which obviously shrinks in real terms over time, but given that you'd want to renew it every 10 years or so anyway, would probably be renegotiated to a fair market rate at that time.
Personally i only purchase DRM free games, but it doesn't still change that fact that major digital storefronts use misleading terms. Maybe physical disks would maintain popularity if customers knew they'd be renting the product for unknown period time instead of owning it.
It's easy to forget that average joe doesn't understand the consequences when we're on our own bubbles.
Edit: The media outrage when Sony removed 550 movies, indicates the customers don't still understand the terms of the sale. It wouldnt make any noises if customers knew they were renting it.
As yes, the poor, ignorant average joe, who doesn't realize the game they buy on the PLAYSTATION store needs PLAYSTATION to work in order to play it. If only enough bloggers wrote enough articles to enlighten them, then they would join the mob and demand forever access to the games they play for 3 weeks then never play again.
I can still play my brother's old PlayStation games on his OG PlayStation. They cannot be revoked arbitrarily, nor their music dropped or swapped out. This a feature, and we'd feel quite cheated if that happened. In fact we still go back to old games from time to time.
I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
> Why carry water for billion companies?
All companies at a certain scale are billion dollar companies. Also, how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not. But, tangentially, I do generally respect entities that fund creative endeavors moreso than I respect gamers who go online to bemoan how persecuted they are
> I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
If those were digital copies you might have chance, otherwise don't count on them to keep working for long. The carts Nintendo used were made with memory that degrades when just sitting on a shelf and people are already reporting that their DS games are failing. I've got an Atari 2600 that still works and plays games fine though. Never even had to replace the joystick, which easily beats the joycons which drift after 400 hours
> I can still play the games I bought on the nintendo switch 8 years ago.
Good luck! I cannot play any of the digital Wii games I bought. And that's kind of my point. You pay the same price as a physical copy, using the same verb, and yet are actually renting for an undisclosed amount of time that may at any point be cut off.
Blockbuster never said I was 'buying' a game which they could take away at any moment. So why do we let these companies use contradictory or obtuse language at our expense?
> how much money a company has is unrelated to whether they violated consumer rights or not
Billion dollar companies are less sympathetic. As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.
> As a consumer I might take a worse deal if it meant supporting a small creator whom I knew was sacrificing a lot for art.
do you see how you and people who buy skins have something in common? you are writing about this, you will PAY for people to NOTICE that you support indie game developers. okay, and 13 year olds will pay for people to notice their cool skins. there are many ways to monetize, you are telling us that you would be monetize in the same category of monetization as freemium games, so are they really so bad? is ownership really important, or does it really belong to the same "noticing" category of monetization?
I'm not talking about freeware games with paid cosmetics. I'm talking about paid products that are sold using words like "buy" which in reality are being rented out.
Pretty sure the answer to that is no, they haven't turned to rocks. I believe Amazon keeps a record of your book purchases, and Amazon isn't going away tomorrow, so you should be able to redownload your books (and probably even back them up). If so, all is good there (relatively speaking).
Sony also keeps records, but good luck redownloading your PSP game. Or your PS3 game for that matter. But at least in that case, if you already have it downloaded, you can still play your game. Sony couldn't come down from above and turn your game into a rock.
The Crew for PS4 on the other hand. You can (probably?) still redownload that, but that doesn't actually do you any good. Ubisoft did come down from above and turn that into a rock (there is no good reason to make a single-player gamemode online-only).
Amazon may not be going away tomorrow, but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita - not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP. They'll probably jump on the Amazon revoke-download train eventually, though.
> but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore.
Well that's bad and also shouldn't happen. They should not be able to come down from heaven and turn your books into rocks.
> If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't already downloaded until you buy a new device.
This is functionally the same as the situation on consoles. You can play the game, but only if you've already downloaded it and kept it around. Not ideal, but at least it's possible to keep it around.
> For now, Sony has no issues with people redownloading PS3 games. Or PSP games onto a Vita
Not for long.[1]
> not sure if you can still download onto an original PSP
Correct, but I don't expect Sony to keep those servers up for long when people can't even buy anything there. It's nothing but a cost centre for Sony at this point.
So Government can track your accounts via IP,Timestamps, Token (if website saves it).
Just incase you dont bother visiting the github page the simplified flow works like this:
1) You scan QR code 2) Verification 3) Provider/Verifier informs website +18 age
So if i verify my age then watch some material which doesn't agree with with my government values like females with male genitals. I'd be royally screwed if government wishes to pursue.
If you are referring to EUID (not fully sure as you said EU eID, i dont know if you are referring the estonia of eID like system)
I have to mention that EUID is not private, since there's "provider" element which informs website if you are 18 or not. The flow is:
1) You scan QR code
2) Your EUDI wallet does verification, informs provider to tell you are 18+
3) Provider informs website you are 18+
The EUID draft doesnt mention tech like ohttp for anonymizing requests. So there's risk of provider keeping track of who you are. So while everybody claims its fully anonymous which is just false. Government could ask website/service for the token or account information then use timestamp or token then combining with "provider" logs, your identity will be exposed.
EUID has another problem which is letting all countries implement system, which is wasteful duplication effort so this probably will be outsourced and to same company to reduce duplication efforts. Then it'll be centralized and they happen be collecting telemetry data for "experience improvements" as everysite out there do.
I haven't even mentioned biggest problems like requiring attestation Apple/Google. While spec doesn't require it, but the likehood country's app requiring it will be very high.
I still think we're solving social media from wrong angle. We should fix the addiction nature, so we can still use social media for informative purposes. (like hobby forums) Before the big platforms took over, there was lots rich information sources about tech and programming I wouldnt be there if those forums did not exist. Right now its just bunch negativity dopamine hits.
It's still weird how those social media bans are essentially "anything with chat/messages requires age check".
If social media is affecting learning, then ban using phones at schools, it's been very effective all around world with no privacy risks.
so instead of burnerphones, they will steal phones and keep phone awake until they have accomplished the crime they gonna do.
This is what always happens when governments enforce laws like this, victims and innoncents always suffer as result.
Its happening in finance where criminals groom dumb teengers for laundering money, or eldery's bank accounts they obtain via installing remote software.
So lets add 1 more reason for criminals to steal phone.
Edit: This is also happening in crypto world where criminals perform fake KYC. I guess with age verifications, this crime will increase in demand multiplefold and the last defense ID will be obsolete after data leaks and the fraud happening around it.
As finn. I can verify scam calls are non-existent lately few do occasinally popup, but its like 2000 times better than before. When i learned about this originally, i was shocked like how this is not default?
Gotta remember the phone system used to run on electromechanical relays not digital systems and the digital upgrades since then were designed to be compatible with the old systems with common carrier rules requiring networks to route calls by default so blocking and verification weren't really built into any of the systems and interfaces between carriers.
This is correct attitude, for example some people actually got arresred for supporting ukraine efforts on war. I disagree that all my assets must be seized because i donated few bucks for sake protecting invaded country.
Ukraine event's is prime example why finanical privacy is important. I think we're solving taxing issue from wrong angle, we should be look this another angle: Merchants should be identifiable and taxable while customer stay private. GNU's solution "Talor" is very interesting and promising.
It is because light(colors) is a fundamentally exponential process and floats are also a fundamentally exponential process and as such the two are a good match for one another.
The problem would still exist, for example when you want to multiply colors which is common in lighting calculations - with integers you would need to divide by either 255 or 256 after such an operation. Which floats you only need to make that decision when converting to/from float representation, which is part of what makes them convenient.
